2024 BAAFN Award
photo credit Haley Kim
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Click on the image above to view the recording of Haley reading her essay
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The Fan Dance Language
by Haley Kim
Dancers dawning glimmering silk 한복 (han-bok) stand on a well-lit stage. Gold embellishments on their sleeves sparkle in the stage light, their lustrous pink skirts raining down in billows around their feet, brushing the ground as they dance. Each of them holds a wooden 부채, a traditional Korean fan, in each hand, and the pink ruffles of the fan flutter magically as the dancers prance around the stage in perfect unity. These are 부채춤 dancers, and they are dancing a traditional Korean fan dance.
I like to think that language is a lot like this dance. At the height of the performance the dancers move their fans together in undulating wave motions as if breathing together. It’s like each of them represents a different letter or character in a language and they come together in a combined effort to spell out words with their movements. These words string themselves into sentences that then turn into conversation as the dance progresses. They put on a spectacular performance, and it looks effortless.
But for me, this stage is not quite well lit. The stage is dark and the dancers that once pranced in perfect unity now stumble, losing their balance and falling to the floor. I used to be fluent in Korean, communicating with my exclusively Korean speaking grandparents with ease. Words used to tumble off my tongue with little effort, stringing themselves together into beautiful coherent sentences. But now all that remains of my spoken Korean are fragments of sounds that struggle to piece together even just individual words.
Perhaps it was when I started school when I stopped speaking Korean. Maybe it was that I was one of the only Asian children in my over twenty-person kindergarten class that made me realize that I was different. Or maybe it was that I had never seen an Asian teacher until I reached fourth grade that made me feel alone. Maybe it was that all throughout elementary school my peers would eat American snacks like crackers and cheese that made me look at the shrimp flavored chips from H-mart as too exotic. That my culture was too strange for others to understand and thus needed to be tucked away and hidden. The language I once saw as gracious and special seemed to me as entirely void of purpose.
As I grew older, I found myself stumbling over the words I used to glide over. I developed an embarrassment of my American-sounding accent when I spoke Korean. I hesitated to speak in fear that my bad accent would make others judge me for not maintaining my Korean roots. When I speak with my grandparents in Korea over KakaoTalk, the words I want to say tangle up in knots of brittle thread in the back of my throat. I see their faces of confusion and sadness as they try to decipher my broken words. It’s even more disappointing that I lost this connection to my culture because of my own neglect and embarrassment.
I often question to what extent I have earned the right to call myself a Korean. Because how can I retain the fact that I am Korean despite not speaking any? Does that mean my “Koreanness” becomes finite with my appearance and is incapable of reaching any further? Am I just an American, cosplaying as a Korean with no qualifications or perhaps is it the other way around? Korean soil is just as foreign of a land to me as any other country in the world, and what I define as my home lies in the United States. When your identity finds its roots in multiple places and none of them define you as truly theirs, where should your heart reach out for open arms?
I’ve realized there are no definite answers to these questions. It is easy to worry about others’ perceptions of your culture and your connection to it but not as easy to find value in your own unique cultural experiences. The only person that can lend me the courage to reconnect with the Korean language is myself. The only thing holding me back from making this reconnection is my own embarrassment at my failure to do so for so long. But it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. Like the 부채춤 dancers, I hope to build back my connection to the Korean language and learn to once again dance through those beautiful Korean words I’ve put aside for so long.
I like to think that language is a lot like this dance. At the height of the performance the dancers move their fans together in undulating wave motions as if breathing together. It’s like each of them represents a different letter or character in a language and they come together in a combined effort to spell out words with their movements. These words string themselves into sentences that then turn into conversation as the dance progresses. They put on a spectacular performance, and it looks effortless.
But for me, this stage is not quite well lit. The stage is dark and the dancers that once pranced in perfect unity now stumble, losing their balance and falling to the floor. I used to be fluent in Korean, communicating with my exclusively Korean speaking grandparents with ease. Words used to tumble off my tongue with little effort, stringing themselves together into beautiful coherent sentences. But now all that remains of my spoken Korean are fragments of sounds that struggle to piece together even just individual words.
Perhaps it was when I started school when I stopped speaking Korean. Maybe it was that I was one of the only Asian children in my over twenty-person kindergarten class that made me realize that I was different. Or maybe it was that I had never seen an Asian teacher until I reached fourth grade that made me feel alone. Maybe it was that all throughout elementary school my peers would eat American snacks like crackers and cheese that made me look at the shrimp flavored chips from H-mart as too exotic. That my culture was too strange for others to understand and thus needed to be tucked away and hidden. The language I once saw as gracious and special seemed to me as entirely void of purpose.
As I grew older, I found myself stumbling over the words I used to glide over. I developed an embarrassment of my American-sounding accent when I spoke Korean. I hesitated to speak in fear that my bad accent would make others judge me for not maintaining my Korean roots. When I speak with my grandparents in Korea over KakaoTalk, the words I want to say tangle up in knots of brittle thread in the back of my throat. I see their faces of confusion and sadness as they try to decipher my broken words. It’s even more disappointing that I lost this connection to my culture because of my own neglect and embarrassment.
I often question to what extent I have earned the right to call myself a Korean. Because how can I retain the fact that I am Korean despite not speaking any? Does that mean my “Koreanness” becomes finite with my appearance and is incapable of reaching any further? Am I just an American, cosplaying as a Korean with no qualifications or perhaps is it the other way around? Korean soil is just as foreign of a land to me as any other country in the world, and what I define as my home lies in the United States. When your identity finds its roots in multiple places and none of them define you as truly theirs, where should your heart reach out for open arms?
I’ve realized there are no definite answers to these questions. It is easy to worry about others’ perceptions of your culture and your connection to it but not as easy to find value in your own unique cultural experiences. The only person that can lend me the courage to reconnect with the Korean language is myself. The only thing holding me back from making this reconnection is my own embarrassment at my failure to do so for so long. But it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. Like the 부채춤 dancers, I hope to build back my connection to the Korean language and learn to once again dance through those beautiful Korean words I’ve put aside for so long.
